1 And
thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon: of shittim wood shalt thou make
it.

2 A cubit
shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof; foursquare shall
it be: and two cubits shall be the height thereof: the horns thereof shall be
of the same.

3 And
thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, the top thereof, and the sides thereof
round about, and the horns thereof; and thou shalt make unto it a crown of gold
round about.

4 And two
golden rings shalt thou make to it under the crown of it, by the two corners
thereof, upon the two sides of it shalt thou make it; and they shall be for
places for the staves to bear it withal.

5 And
thou shalt make the staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold.

6 And
thou shalt put it before the veil that is by the ark of the testimony, before
the mercy seat that is over the testimony, where I will meet with thee.

7 And
Aaron shall burn thereon sweet incense every morning: when he dresseth the
lamps, he shall burn incense upon it.

8 And
when Aaron lighteth the lamps at even, he shall burn incense upon it, a
perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.

10 And
Aaron shall make an atonement upon the horns of it once in a year with the
blood of the sin offering of atonements: once in the year shall he make
atonement upon it throughout your generations: it is most holy unto the Lord.
(Exodus 30:1-10)

These verses describe the
altar of incense that was to be placed in the holy place in front of the veil
leading to the holy of holies.Incense was to be burned on it every morning and evening.

That the high priest burns
this incense hints it represents the intercessory prayers Christ says on our
behalf.

We learn in Revelation that
burning the incense was also to represent the prayer of the Saints (see Rev
5:8).Saints in our temples today
continue to offer intercessory prayers.

What else do we learn about
prayer from the instructions about the burning of incense here and in Leviticus
16:12-13?

With the burning of incense
in the morning and the evening, we learn about frequency of prayer.I suppose morning and evening should be
the minimum we pray.Incense isn’t burned all at once,
though.It burns little by little;
so too our prayers should continue little by little throughout the day.

I love the association of
prayer with burning incense that would create a smell.Think about what that teaches about
prayer.It tells us that prayer
creates a certain kind of atmosphere, a feeling that is special, something we
can sense.

Exodus 30:34-38 tells us the
ingredients for the perfumed incense and the proportions in which it was to be
made.It was to be ONLY used for
these holy things, nowhere else.The Lord was so serious about this that He commanded those who made it
for their own use were to be “cut off” or excommunicated.We see the Lord wanted the Israelites
to think of the temple and remember the temple when they smelled it and
associate it only with the
temple.What does this teach us
about prayer?I think it is
teaching us to associate prayer with conversing with God and with no other
being.Just as the incense wasn’t
for personal use, prayer is not meant to make us look good.

The blood of Atonement once
a year cleansed the altar of incense.This says to me that our prayers are only effective because of Christ’s
sacrifice for us and we should pray for forgiveness of our sins when we find ourselves
in the wrong.

Next, see how incense plays
a part of the priest’s duties in the Day of Atonement:

11 And
Aaron shall bring the bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and
shall make an atonement for himself, and for his house, and shall kill the
bullock of the sin offering which is for himself:

12 And he
shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the
Lord, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the
veil:

13 And he
shall put the incense upon the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the
incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not:

14 And he
shall take of the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it with his finger upon
the mercy seat eastward; and before the mercy seat shall he sprinkle of the
blood with his finger seven times.

15 ¶Then
shall he kill the goat of the sin offering, that is for the people, and bring
his blood within the veil, and do with that blood as he did with the blood of
the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat:
(Lev. 16:11-15, emphasis added)

I have written
recently about the meaning of the bells on the high priests robes making a
sound so “that he die not.”In the
above verses of Leviticus Aaron was instructed to bring incense and the censer
of hot coals within the veil into the holy of holies and burn incense so that
the cloud of incense would cover the mercy seat “that he die not.”Once again, we have something that is
supposed to become a safety measure, something that is not generally considered
to be protective.We know this
should be symbolic of something Christ would do to ensure his spiritual
protection.

I think that this is
testifying of Christ’s earnest prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane when he
wanted the bitter cup to pass from Him but prayed submissively that God’s will
be done.It was that time more
than any other that he needed protection from the temptations of Satan in order
to carry out that great sacrifice.He needed the strength to continue under the crushing burden of
humanity’s sins that must have been pressing down on Him.

It is so cool to me that we
can learn so much about Christ from these little bits of symbolism of the
Tabernacle.

Recent Comments

About Me

Michaela Stephens

Arizona, United States

I'm a happily married 32-year old who switched from Electronic Engineering Technology to Literature, Writing, and Film.
I worked for 3 years at ASU as a writing tutor and have over 400 sessions worth of experience helping people with their writing.
I'm the oldest of seven children (5 boys, 2 girls)
I'm a bit of a neat freak and an undeniable bookworm.

Disclaimer

http://scriptoriumblogorium.blogspot.com/ is a website with no official affiliation to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed here are those of the individual author and do not necessarily represent the position of the LDS Church. Likewise, the blogs linked to from this site do not necessarily represent the views of Scriptorium Blogorium or its owner.

If you want to opt out of Google Analytic’s advertising features, you can go here [https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/] and download an extension for your browser.

Commenting Policy: Please use respectful language, with no profanity or obscenity. Play nice, don't fight. Repetitious comments will be deleted. Comments advertising anything unrelated to the subject of the parent post will be deleted. Comments linking to offensive websites will be deleted.